Reddit reviews FastRack Food Grade Vinyl Tubing - 10 feet 5/16 ID - 7/16 OD, Clear
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Country Of Origin: United StatesModel Number: 2Y-U7VC-TC1UItem Package Dimension: 11.0" L x 8.0" W x 1.2" HItem Package Weight: 1.0 lb
I've made some slight modifications to this, mostly to make it easier to follow. I've also included steps that should be quite obvious to someone who's done any homebrewing before, but I wish someone had told me when I first started.
I'd link to the original, for the sake of attribution, but the user who posted this deleted their account not long after I wrote everything down.
This will produce a sweet fruit-mead (or melomel). WARNING this will be far more alcoholic than it tastes, and should not be consumed if you've recently taken antibiotics, or suffered gastric distress, as the yeast culture will still be alive, and will happily colonize your intestines if your gut microbiome is too fucked up.
Equipment: Most of this stuff will be a good deal cheaper at your local homebrew store, but I've included amazon links (also to the yeast).
At least 2 (3 is better, for reasons we'll get to) 1-gallon jugs (I don't recommend scaling this up), glass preferred. Add an extra jug for each additional batch. This one includes a drilled stopper and airlock
Drilled stoppers (or carboy bungs) and airlocks, non-drilled rubber stoppers.
An autosiphon and food-safe tubing.
Food-safe sanitizing solution (I recommend StarSan).
An electric kettle with temperature selector is useful, but not needed.
If you want to bottle it rather than just keeping a jug in your fridge:
Empty beer or wine bottles (just save your empties), capping or corking equipment, caps or corks, and a bottling wand.
Ingredients:
2.5 lbs (1130g) honey, clover recommended.
A cup (approximately 250ml) or so of fruit (I recommend blackberries, and I strongly recommend against cherries, other recipes have worked for me, but this yields a very medical flavor with cherries).
1 packet Lalvin EC-1118 yeast (a champagne yeast notable for its hardiness, its ability to out-compete other microorganisms, and its high alcohol tolerance).
Optional: potassium sorbate (to reduce yeast activity when our ferment is done), pectic enzyme (aka pectinase - for aesthetic purposes). Both are also available in bulk.
Process:
Day 1:
Mix sanitizing solution with clean water at specified proportions in one of your jugs, filling the jug most of the way. Stopper it, shake it. Remove stopper, set it down wet-side-up (to keep it sterile), pour the fluid to another jug. There will be foam left behind, this is fine, don't bother to rinse it or anything. At low concentrations this stuff is totally fine to drink, and won't ruin your fermentation or flavor.
Add honey to jug, all of it.
If you have a kettle, and your jug is glass, heat water to around 160F (71 Celsius), pour a volume into your jug roughly equal to the amount of honey present. Fix sterile stopper to jug. Shake until honey and water are thoroughly combined. The heat will make it FAR easier to dissolve the honey. Set aside for an hour or so while it cools. Add clean water 'til mostly full, leaving some room for fruit and headspace.
If you're missing a kettle, or using a plastic jug, this is gonna be a little harder. Fill most of the way with clean water (I recommend using a filter) leaving some room for fruit and headspace. Fix sterile stopper, shake 'til honey and water are thoroughly combined. This will take a while, and you will need to shake VERY vigorously.
At this point, you should have a jug mostly-full of combined honey and water. To this, add fruit (inspecting thoroughly for mold, don't want to add that). Then dump in a single packet of the Lalvin EC-1118 yeast, don't bother rehydrating it first or anything, it'll be fine going straight in. Add pectic enzyme if you have it (this does nothing to the flavor, it just makes the end product less cloudy). Stopper it up, shake it again. This jug now contains your "must" (pre-ferment mead).
Pour some sterilizing fluid in a bowl, put a carboy bung/drilled stopper in the bowl, with an airlock. Ensure full immersion. Let sit for a minute. Replace stopper with your bung/drilled stopper, affix airlock. Fill airlock with clean water, sanitizing fluid, or vodka. Rinse the stopper, fix it to your jug of sanitizing fluid.
Place must-jug in a dark place, I recommend a cabinet or closet.
Days 2-7:
Retrieve jug, give it a little jostle. Nothing so vigorous as to get your mead into the airlock, but enough to upset it. This is to release CO2 buildup, and to keep any part of the fruit from drying out. The foaming from the CO2 release may be very vigorous. Do this over a towel for your first batch. If the foam gets into your airlock, clean your airlock and reaffix it. Perform this jostling procedure at least once per day, more is better.
Day 8:
Final jostling, I recommend doing this in the morning.
Day 9:
let it sit, we want the sediment to settle.
Day 10: Time to get it off the sediment
Shake sterilizing fluid jug. Affix tubing to siphon. Put the siphon in the sterilizing fluid, shake the jug a little just to get the whole siphon wet. Siphon fluid into either a third container or a large bowl. This is all to sterilize both the inside and outside of your siphoning system.
Remove siphon from jug. Give it a couple pumps to empty it of any remaining fluid. Place siphon in your mead jug, leaving the end of the tubing in sterilizing fluid while you do this.
Take the jug that you just siphoned the sterilizing fluid from. Dump what fluid remains in it. Place the end of the tubing in this jug, then siphon the mead into it. Make no attempt to get the last bit of mead into your fresh container, it's mostly dead yeast and decomposing fruit.
Add potassium sorbate if you have it, stopper the jug, place it in your fridge.
Clean the jug you started in. Clean your siphon and tubing.
Day 11:
Let it sit
Day 12 or later: time to transfer again, or bottle it.
If you no longer have a jug full of sterilizing fluid, make one.
Repeat the earlier steps to sterilize the siphoning system, with a bottling wand attached to the end of the tubing if you want to bottle.
Sterilize your bottles or a clean jug, either with fluid or heat.
Siphon mead either into your bottles or jug. Stopper/cap/cork when done.
Put your jug/bottles in the fridge.
The yeast culture is still alive, and will continue to ferment. The fridge, and optional potassium sorbate, will merely slow this down. I recommend drinking any bottles within two months, to avoid a risk of bursting bottles. The mead should already be tasty at this point, but usually tastes much better after a couple more weeks.
EDIT: Fixed the formatting up a bit.
Angled clearomizer, just the tip, or try to fit this on somehow and leave the pv where ever.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000E62TCC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_wd3RDb7MVN2D9
I use it as a straw on a regular basis, it's completely poitionable, and it's not hard to clean.
Without a proper airlock, the brewing vessel is either going to build up pressure and pop, or it's going to let in all sorts of things from the air, and would be about as safe as any attempt to drink grape juice that's been sitting out on the counter for a few weeks.
It's possible to brew this way, but it's almost guaranteed to end up poorly. There's a very high chance of it going bad, that is, of growing mold or other unwanted microbiotic visitors. You'll probably be able to see this happen.
Even if it doesn't work, the end result will most likely be one of the nastiest forms of wine you've ever had. It's not quite prison hooch, but it'll be close.
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If you and your friends really want to try and get into brewing on the cheap, my suggestion is to start with an airlock and bung like these, find a gallon of apple juice or apple cider at the grocery store in a glass bottle with no preservatives (check the label), and drop in 1/4 of a packet of a brewing yeast like this one. It's a very beginner friendly (and kinda harsh) yeast that will survive mistreatment and bad conditions no problem. You put the yeast in the apple juice, you put a little water in the airlock, you put the airlock on the jug, and wait a month. You'll want to get a food safe hose to siphon out the brew when it's done, and you'll need bottles to age it in (the stuff will taste bad at first but give it 5-8 months and you'll have somethign wonderful). When the brew finishes that first month, fill up the bottles and seal them, then keep them somewhere cool for 5-8 months. Note: you'll need clean glass bottles, and you'll want to sanitize them or else any bugs in there will make the brew go bad while it ages. I like swing top bottles, they don't require a capper machine or a supply of caps.
Total cost to brew up a simple tasty cider, including all supplies:
Coming out to less than 50$ to get started, and most of that you won't have to buy again for later brews. If you find a local homebrewing shop you might be able to get these things cheaper... or not. At least you should be able to find them in single packs instead of amazon's bulk sets.
I had similar problems with my cage. I got a jar of InstaMorph and made a little cover for the back of the bar. Works perfectly. I also used the slightly bigger ring and threaded it through a piece of Food Grade Vinyl Tubing which both reduces the diameter, but more importantly, makes it non-skin, without being to grippy. If that makes sense.
Vinyl Tubing - 10 feet 5/16 ID - 7/16 OD (Food Grade) https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B000E62TCC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_G7d6BbHPD31ZP
This is the 3/8" copper wort chiller that I have.
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This is the tubing which I bought separately and have been using until now.
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This is the tubing I'm considering purchasing.